San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera this week expanded his suit against the city’s school district and Board of Education for dillydallying in reopening schools, which apparently don’t care about the fact that children are killing themselves.
The educrats there are independent of mayoral control, but fully under the thumb of the local teachers’ union, which has offered impossible demands rather than let members do their jobs.
Herrera’s initial suit cited the record-high numbers of hospitalized suicidal children and those requiring emergency mental health care. Now he’s added charges of violating students’ rights to attend public school under the state Constitution, discriminating against students on the basis of wealth and violating state law by not offering in-person classes “to the greatest extent possible.”
The schools have been closed for nearly a year, though health officials gave the go-ahead to reopen back in September. All the science says it’s safe, and Frisco’s private, parochial and charter schools have resumed in-person classes safely, reporting fewer than five cases of suspected transmission. But the 52,000 public-school students suffer on.
San Francisco’s mayor backs the suit, noting data showing that the city’s low-income, black and Latino students are substantially suffering from closures. The same stats keep popping up nationwide.
The court hearing is set for March 22, but Herrera may have finally scared the footdraggers: The city superintendent has announced a tentative agreement with unions — but the terms may well make it far too likely that everything shuts down again.
It’s obscene that even a wave of child suicides wouldn’t do the trick — only the chance of a lawsuit might actually force a reopening without the union being able to win new privileges.
